As many have come to know, the Final Fantasy VII Remake is going to be split into multiple parts. I did a write up earlier this week regarding my speculation of what exactly that would entail. On the official Square Enix blog, returning director Yoshinori Kitase discussed why exactly it has taken them so long to create a remake of their most successful entry in the franchise, and why he wants to split it up into more than one game.
With Final Fantasy VII Remake, we have the opportunity to go beyond the story, world and experience of Final Fantasy VII in ways we’ve always dreamed of - from the depths of Midgar to the skies above the Planet. The multi-part format enables us to expand the original story and turn it into an epic experience for fans and new gamers alike.One thing that we wanted to be clear about during [PlayStation Experience 2015] to accompany the new trailer was the scale of this project. We wanted to tell you this now and not in the future so that you’d share our vision for what we want to deliver. The biggest reason why we haven’t done a remake until now is because it’s a massive undertaking to reconstruct Final Fantasy VII from the ground up with the current technology. Producing a proper HD remake of Final Fantasy VII that maintains the same feeling of density of the original would result in a volume of content that couldn’t possibly fit into one installment.
So there you have it, from the man who made Final Fantasy VII a reality in the first place. Kitase clearly has a lot of love for this game. The original PlayStation release of Final Fantasy VII is very near and dear to many members of the Final Fantasy team at Square Enix. The story of love and loss is something that we could all connect to, and led to its wild international success, more so than any other RPG game coming out of Japan up to that point. So naturally when they did finally decide to make an HD Remake, it needed to be perfect.